For those of you who’ve seen me flitting about on social media, especially Instagram, then you know how much I love my journals and notebooks. It is truly an affliction. I can’t resist the call of a beautiful looking journal, knowing I can fill its blank pages with my genius thoughts.

Once I get the journal home, it’s another story. The pages are so pretty and pristine, I am reluctant to sully them with my less than important. So, I put the date on the journal and place it on the shelf. It still looks pretty, but it’s unused.

What happens next? Well, I get into an organizing frenzy. Since I see so many journals on the shelf, I pick one for story ideas, one for daily to do lists and one for note taking. Since they’re so disparate, I do need the three journals, right? After about a week, that plan, as brilliant as I thought it was, is all shot to hell.

Enter 2018 and yet another renewed effort for organization. My daughter encouraged me to purchase yet another journal, because 1) she wanted one and 2) they were on sale for 4 dollars each with a coupon and 3) they were so pretty I couldn’t resist. Not only did I end up purchasing more journal-ly meth, I also drew my daughter into the dangerous world of stationery addictions.

My foolish family fuels my addictions!

When I got home, I determined that this HAD TO STOP! There was no way I could go on with piles of beautiful but blank journals. That’s not what they were made for. I needed to use them for their intended purpose.

And then, I watched a rerun of Breaking Bad. Hank is investigating the death of someone and it winds up they kept meth recipes, titration diagrams and vegan brownie recipes…in the same notebook. While this may seem minor, it was a true epiphany for me. I could use my journal in a multipurpose way.

Which notes do I write in this journal, you may ask?

No. I did not organize it. No, I didn’t do anything cute like those nifty bullet journals. As Dirty Harry said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” I scribble book snippets that occur to me at odd times, partial grocery lists, passwords and story ideas. And guess what?

IT WORKS!

Not only am I keeping up with it after a full seven days (a record), I am saving so much time. Yes, I do have to flip through a few pages to find what I’m looking for, but that’s what stick flags are for. The point is, I KNOW the information is there because I KNOW I wrote it down. For a disorganized kinda gal like me, this is just so…..liberating!

Oh, yes, the tip for Tuesday? Try a one notebook approach!

Shout out to Breaking Bad for the breakthrough! (See what I did there?)

How are you handling organization? Are you a journal person? A phone person? Let me know in the comments.